Tom Renney hasn’t used the press to deliver messages to referees throughout the season. But the Rangers’ head coach, who is nothing if not calculating, sure did yesterday in delivering a monologue regarding some of the questionable boarding penalties his team has been assessed thus far in its first-round playoff series.

Delivered a rebuke to the Devils, as well.

“[I don’t like] the turning and protecting the puck with the back to the checker, then falling down and grabbing your head, and then jumping up and skating away after a penalty has been called,” Renney said following practice. “You haven’t seen any of our guys do that.

“This is an honorable game. We play with all the honor the game requires. We’d like to see our opponent do the same.”

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Kevin Weekes, stand-up goaltender and stand-up guy, hit it precisely following Monday’s Game 2, 4-1 loss – and by the way, no, we don’t believe he should have tried to outrace John Madden for the puck.

“The Devils have a lot of experience at being who they are, and we’re learning as we go,” said Weekes. “We only started working this year with a whole new group.”

But what’s interesting is that, in coming closer Monday than they did Saturday, the Rangers did so by playing more like the Devils; by getting the puck in deep, by grinding it out, by largely changing the directional compass from east-west to north-south.

Tonight, however, the Rangers need to find the way to get Petr Sykora more open ice, and they need to use him on the power-play point, where he possesses the most deadly shot of anyone on the club.

Renney’s resisted ever since the Rangers acquired Sykora in January – the coach is concerned about defensive shortcomings – but the Devils were once concerned about that, too, when Sykora played there.

They were concerned, that is, until they gave him the opportunity and watched him fire away from 60 feet with a heavy shot that nearly always found the net and produced numerous rebound opportunities for hungry teammates. Saturday’s five-PPG explosion aside, the Devils never have been more dangerous than they were with Sykora on the point in 2000 and 2001.

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If Brian Rafalski has ever played better hockey in his own zone than in the first two games of this series both at even strength and short-handed, we’d like to know when. No, he’s not getting hit, and that’s always a help, but it’s not as if the Rangers aren’t trying to target the 5-foot-9 defenseman. It’s that Rafalski has avoided putting himself in position to be hit.

The Bob Baun Award goes to Steve Rucchin, who could barely sit on the bench following shifts Monday because of the pain, but nevertheless produced 16:40 of power hockey while playing with a broken bone in his right foot.

Wait a second: The Devils aren’t really going to get away with giving Brad Lukowich 22 minutes of ice a night, are they? And just asking this, too, but is Grant Marshall the biggest whiner ever to play for the Devils or is it just a thing he has playing the Rangers that suggests he should go onto the ice sucking on a pacifier?